Daddy asks kids about school…

Maybe he should rephrase the question and ask her “What was your favorite thing you did in school this morning?”  That might get more of a response.  Just yesterday I asked a friends 4th grader if he had fun on his field trip the day before.  His answer was “yes.” That was it.  But then when I asked him what his favorite thing at the museum was, he told me all about the animals and several facts about the golden eagles.  Simply rephrasing the question got a whole different response!!

For some kids that is totally normal.  My son (even when he was young) probably could have seen an elephant come up to the door balancing a clown on his trunk, and when his dad asked what happened would say “I don’t remember”.

I think he should keep asking, but in a casual way…  and not push if she says nothing.  And, I’d try to occasionally take pictures etc.

Actually, my son went to a pre-school for a year, 2 days I week I think it was, and they did something that was really neat (but a bunch of effort, probably especially for the teacher!)  My husband wishes I’d do it, but with 4 kids, there is no way….

What the pre-school did, was each child had a journal (a little composition book…).  Every day, the teachers would write something that the child did, and generally had something in it to represent that.  So for instance, there would be something about my son playing in the sand box, and they glued some sand to the page.  Or he played with the railroad set, and the teacher traced a railroad track piece to it.  Often they had taken pictures with the digital camera and put that in.  I was amazed how personalized the entries were…. yes sometimes it was a bit more generic, but most of the time it was something my son specifically did.

The other part to it was before each “school” day (so 2-3x a week) the parent wrote something in the journal and added something to make the page meaningful for the child.  A few students would get to share about their journal entry during circle time.    We still have the journal, and it is quite cool to look through.   I wish I had the energy/determination to do this for the kids… and once they write better I’m going to try to encourage them to write something in a personal journal.

Anyway – that would be a good thing to do… taking 10 or 15 minutes to jot down something in the journal, adding in something she could understand to it…. then she could share it with her dad.